Abstract: This article argues that twenty-first century cultural representations of British-Jewish life are, on the one hand, various, popular and successful, and, on the other, defensive and apologetic to the extent that they are liable to offer readers and viewers literal and aesthetic translations of the detail of Jewish culture. It explores the workings of such a process in relation to a variety of recent texts about contemporary and wartime British-Jewish life, including Howard Jacobson’s novel The Finkler Question, Mike Leigh’s play Two Thousand Years, Robert Popper’s television series Friday Night Dinner, and fiction by Andrew Sanger, Naomi Alderman, Charlotte Mendelson and Natasha Solomons.
